For your

> get into a research program that fits one's skills that is the toughest part.

I didn't bother with that and, instead, picked my own problem, did my own research, and submitted my results. My professors had very little idea what I was doing until I was done and submitted my work. Net, my "research program" was mine. Maybe in some fields, e.g., cell biology, can't do what I did and your description is correct.

But if pick a good school, then what I said is simple but correct. E.g., Johns Hopkins, where I got my Ph.D., then, and maybe still, has no official coursework requirement for a Ph.D. The official requirement for a dissertation was, and maybe still is, "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication". If there is any doubt, then the student can just submit the work for publication.

In my case, I took a problem I noticed in a course, did a pass by the library to confirm that there was no solution in the literature, worked up a rough solution, asked for a 'reading course' to attack the problem, got the course approved, and right away showed my rough solution. Two weeks later I had a nice, clean, solid solution. I walked my original work around campus to some world famous guys, and they saw my work as new. So my work was clearly publishable. So, in two weeks I'd met the official requirement for a dissertation. My work was not trivial: I found a new result comparable with the classic Whitney extension theorem and applied my result to solve the problem I'd started with but noticed that my work also solved a problem stated but not solved in a famous paper by Arrow, Hurwicz, and Uzawa. Poor Uzawa may still have not gotten his Nobel prize!

I didn't try to use that work as my dissertation, but the reading course credit filled out what I needed for a Master's. Also my research in that reading course put a halo on my head so that a Ph.D. was much more likely. Let me emphasize again, the key is in one word, research.

For my dissertation, I took a problem I'd brought to graduate school, done the research on it independently in my first summer, got the work approved as my dissertation, wrote and ran some illustrative software, wrote up my work, stood for an oral exam, and got my Ph.D. For the work of the reading course, I published that later in a good journal.

In most good research universities, a student who passes the qualifying exams and has some good, publishable work will have to do something really strange not to get a Ph.D.

Some good research can make the political mud wrestling disappear quickly.

The main reason for ABD is the challenge of doing some research that is publishable, "new, correct, and significant". If there is any doubt about the quality of the work, then just publish it.

The definition of a good algorithm is from J. Edmonds. He was a graduate student at U. Maryland, told the faculty to stuff it, went to NBS, did some research on graph theory, published it, and got a visit from U. Maryland saying that if he would take copies of his papers, put them in a stack, put a staple in a corner, and submit that as his dissertation, then he'd get his Ph.D. Again, the point is the research. The mud wrestling is nonsense easily wiped away by some good research.

edit: Incidentally, JHU is where I've gotten offers to continue. How did you like living around there?

When my wife and I were at Hopkins, there was some nice graduate student housing just east of campus, and I'd look into that.

For the neighborhood of the medical school campus, maybe it's okay, but I'd check to be sure.